


blue christmas.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, Holidays, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:28:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>because a part of me needed this to happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blue christmas.

There is an order to his days, there is a steadiness to his work.  Castiel works the morning shift on Sundays.  He unlocks the doors at six.  The coffee maker is running by six fifteen.  He signs for deliveries at nine forty-five.  At half past ten on Sundays, there is a pair of elderly sisters who come in to purchase Icees and hot dogs and lottery tickets.  He stocks the shelves after his lunch break.  

He gets off at two p.m., but he is also scheduled to work the night shift.  He doesn’t have very much time to waste in between shifts.  He’s found he prefers spending those hours in the back office, sitting on the folding chair pushed up against the wall and resting his back and knees and feet, all of which ache by the end of his shift.  Nora will let him stay there and slowly sip on a cup of coffee as long he can find something to talk to her about.  Nora will half-sit, half-stand at her desk chair throughout an entire shift, talking to anyone who comes through the door.  

Nora is on the computer, clicking through websites and showing him all the presents she has bought for her daughter.  “Do all children require that many toys?” he asks her cautiously.  It’s something he’s been wondering about lately.  The magazines he’s read from the periodical stand all seem to encourage it at this time of year.  He knows how much he is paid.  He wonders how parents can afford toys and continue to feed their children.

Nora laughs and slides out of her chair.  “Well, maybe not,” she says, “but it’s her first Christmas. I’ve got to spoil her a little bit.  It’s supposed to be special.” 

—

On Monday he works the nightshift.  He gets up at five-thirty and is out of the gas station and locking the door behind him by five fifty-five.  It’s close, but he is confident  that Bill won’t be there to open until six-fifteen.  He spends the day at the truck stop down the road.  He takes a shower and buys a corn dog at the counter.  They don’t have corn dogs at the Gas ‘N Sip.  He has recommended them to Nora, but so far she hasn’t expressed an interest in placing an order.

On Tuesday the HVAC breaks, and the temperature inside the gas station is close to matching the temperature outside.  Nora brings in an electric heater and sets it up behind the counter and stands in front of it to warm her feet.  

Castiel heads to the Wal-Mart down the road on his lunch break, feeling the wind straight through his denim jacket.  He buys gloves and earmuffs and the thickest coat he can find in the men’s section and wanders around for a while, looking at holiday decorations.  He puts on the coat before he walks outside the store, layering it over his jacket.  He transfers his belongings from  his jacket pockets to his coat pockets, his set of keys to the gas station doors and his wallet and his cell phone.  

There are five new, unread messages in his cell phone inbox.  He empties the inbox and turns off his phone.

When he returns, he finds that Nora is sitting on the stool behind the counter, making last minute changes to the week’s schedule and leaning her elbows on the glass countertops.  She’s leaving smudges where her fingers are tapping at the glass. She keeps saying she’s going to start letting Castiel make the weekly schedules, so that they will stand a chance at being done correctly and will at the very least be filled out and posted on time, but she hasn’t done so yet.  

Castiel reads over her shoulder. Tomorrow  the gas station will be opening at four a.m.. and closing at two a.m. on the next day.  Holiday hours, Nora says. Nora is altering the shifts.  He frowns at the schedule she hands him.  

“We open at six,” he reminds her.

She idly nudges the heater with the toe of her sneaker.  “We don’t open at six on Christmas, Steve,” she says.  

“And why is that?”

“Because it’s Christmas,” she says, like that is an valid excuse for altering a perfectly good schedule. “Most people have places to be on Christmas eve.  I’ll be at my sister’s house,” Nora tells him.  “I’m taking Tanya to meet her cousins.  She’s never seen them before.  They live in Casper. Gonna be a hell of a drive.”

“That’s nice,” Castiel says.

“What about you?” Nora asks. “Any plans for the holidays?”

Castiel had been starting to wonder if she needs another babysitter.  He still isn’t used to Nora’s methods of asking for favors.  “No,” he says. “No plans.”

“Family out of town?”

“Yes,” he tells her.  “My family lives far away.  I can’t make it home this year.”

She stares down at the schedule.  “Do you have plans with your friend? The one I met?”

They hadn’t really met.  Castiel had never introduced her to Dean.  He thinks about the messages on his cell phone.  He thinks they might have been from Dean.  He’s glad he hadn’t opened any of the messages.  It’s nice to think that one of those messages might have been Dean, wishing him a happy Christmas, the same way he has been wishing customers a happy Christmas for the past three weeks. He’s not entirely sure that Dean would place any significance on this particular season, but he might have remembered it anyway.  It’s a nice thought.

“I don’t think so,” he says.

She looks at him, speculative. “So you can work tomorrow night, maybe? I hate to ask, but…”

He sighs.  “Yes.  I’ll be here.”

—

Nora is working the morning shift, but leaves when he arrives at two that afternoon.  She’s putting on her red wool coat and tying a scarf around her neck while he carefully scrapes his shoes by the door and shakes the snow off his coat.

Nora hands him an envelope on her way out. He looks down at it in his hand.  “What’s this for?” he asks slowly.

She shakes her head.  “It’s for you,” she answers, and stands on the tips of her toes to kiss him on the cheek.  “Merry Christmas, Steve.”

“I didn’t get you anything,” he says, but Nora is shaking her head.  “You didn’t have to,” she says.  

He stands there for a moment, holding the envelope.  No one has ever given him a card before.  He wonders if he should go ahead and open it.  Nora hadn’t said.   He sets the envelope in front of the cash register and watches her leave.  He can see her walking across the parking lot, her sneakers leaving shallow depressions in the new fallen snow.  He will need to shovel the sidewalk outside the entrance again.  He will need to drag bags of salt all along the parking lot.

Business is slow.  There are a few trucks and cars and minivans still out on the interstate, but none of them are stopping at the Gas ‘N Sip.  At five thirty, he turns on the television and slowly clicks through the channels.  He catches fragments of the news as he clicks past the twenty-four hour news station channels.  They all seemed concerned about the possibility of a winter storm front moving in.  He clicks past a sermon.  Reverend Buddy Boyle is reading aloud from the bible, passages from Matthew and Luke. He passes over the horrors.  

If Castiel stops and closes his eyes, he can still remember the time after the Christ child was born.  Angels delivered Mary and Joseph from Herod’s slaughter,  They were the only ones the angels saved.  Heaven allowed every other infant to be killed.  He shakes his head.  He tries to think of something else.

He dozes off, sitting at the counter.  He finds he doesn’t care too much about the marks he’s leaving on the glass.  He can always clean them off later.  He can feel the heater warming the backs of his legs and soaking through his sneakers.

He hears a car door slam, the bells over the entrance jingling, and before he really understands what’s happening Dean is stomping his feet on the mats by the door and brushing snow off his jacket and grinning at him like there’s no place else in the world he’s supposed to be right now.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says,  That’s all he says.  But he’s looking at Castiel, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.  He eyes are soft around the edges.

“Dean,” he says slowly. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Dean says, sounding bewildered.  No.  That’s not right.  He sounds hurt.  “Nothing, Cas, I just…wanted to see you.”  

“Why?”

Dean makes a huffing sound.  “Because,” Dean says. “It’s Christmas. And I came here to see you.”  He shoves his hands in his jacket pockets.  “Didn’t you get my messages, man? I was asking if I could see you.  For Christmas. I thought you’d want to be with me.  I could have picked you up and we could have gone somewhere and I could have brought you back.  Didn’t you want that?”

“I did want that. I do want that.”

“Then why are you here?” Dean asks.

“Because Nora needs me here tonight,” Castiel says.  “I have to work.”

“I thought,” Dean says, and then he swallows.   “I thought you’d be happy.  To see me.”

“I can’t leave now,” he says, and Dean looks away, looks down at the floor, where snow is melting off  his boots and all over the tiles.  “I’m working.”

“I know you’re working now,” Dean says, “but what are you doing later?”

Castiel shrugs.  “I don’t know,” he mutters.  “I don’t get off until two.”

Dean is quiet for a few moments, and Castiel starts to turn away.  Finally he says, “Can I stay?”

“What?”

“Can I stay?” Dean asks again.  “With you, tonight.”

“Stay here, with me?”

“Yeah. With you.  It’s Christmas,” Dean is saying, and Castiel doesn’t know what to say in return.  “I want to be here.  I want to be here with you.”

—

There are nights he has stayed awake for hours, wrapped in his sleeping bag and imagining Dean coming here, just like this.  He doesn’t quite know what to do with Dean now that he’s here.

He makes Dean a plate of nachos, and one for himself too, and they eat nachos standing up, with their paper plates on the counter by the register.  “I’ll pay,” Dean offers.  “Don’t want you getting in trouble.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Castiel tells him.  “It’s on the house.”

But Dean shakes his head.  “Nah,” he says, and pulls some crumpled bills out of his wallet and hands it carefully over to Castiel and he thinks, This is what humans do. This is something humans do together.  They share food.  They spend time with each other.  They drive a thousand miles, just to see each other for one short night.

Dean helps him take inventory.  He follows Castiel around with the notepad and a pen and writes down everything Castiel tells him to write.  

“I used to do all my Christmas shopping for Sam at places like this,” Dean tells him.  He is playing with a swiveling rack of t-shirts and baseball hats printed with Idaho’s state bird.  “Porn and shaving cream and shitty glass dolphin figurines.  I still do.”  He takes a handful of items out of his pocket and puts them in Castiel’s hands.  A pack of playing cards, a beer bottle opener in the form of a key ring, a pack of gum.  Castiel feels himself smiling.  “Merry Christmas, Cas.”

“I have something for you,” he tells Dean, and Dean’s eyes widen.  “You do?” he asks.  Castiel takes a leather bracelet off the rack by the t-shirts and drops the bracelet in Dean’s palm.  Dean stands there, staring down into his hand. He is smiling, just a little, but he doesn’t seem pleased.  He says, “Thanks, Cas.”  Only he doesn’t say it like he’s thankful.  He says it kind of like his heart is breaking.

He puts the key ring and the gum in his pockets.  Dean reaches over takes back the cards.  He breaks open the plastic wrapping.  “Hey, Cas.  You know how to play?”

“Play what?”

“Anything.”

“No, I don’t know how to play anything.”

“Okay, well.”  Dean grins at him, long and slow.  “I can teach you.”

—

At half-past one, Castiel makes Dean coffee.  Dean watches him do it.  He stands right by Castiel’s shoulder, smiling a little as Castiel pours him a cup and makes it the way Dean asks for it, three sugars, no cream.  He’s tired. Dean is quiet.  Castiel can feel Dean standing beside him.  He is brushing his hand up and down Castiel’s arm.  Castiel can feel the warmth of his touch through the sleeve of his shirt.

“Your hand healed,” he says.

“Yeah.”

Dean takes his hand away from Castiel’s arm.  “It’s freezing in here,” Dean says finally.

The warmth from Dean’s hand vanishes like it never was there.  “There’s no heat,” Castiel admits.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Not really,” Castiel says.  “It’s been this way since Tuesday.  I’m used to it now.”

“Hey,” Dean says, “hey.  Come here.” He takes the coffee out of Castiel’s hand.  He leads Castiel over by the heater, and sits down to the floor.

Castiel remains standing.  “What are you doing?”

Dean reaches up and takes the corner of Castiel’s sleeve.  He tugs, just a little.  “Please,” Dean says.  “Just…could you just please sit with me? For a little while.”  

They drink their coffee sitting on the floor, close to the heater. He can feel Dean’s shoulder pressing against his own.  It feels strange.  It makes him tired in a way he’s never known before. It feels like something should be different.  Something should have changed.  But he’s missed it, whatever it is supposed to be.  There isn’t anything that can change now.  Maybe it could have, once.  He wants to close his eyes and put his head on Dean’s shoulder and stay that way until Dean changed his mind.  He won’t, he knows.  But he wishes he could.  

“What’s this?” Dean asks. He is picking up Nora’s card off the floor, where it has fallen behind the counter

“It’s from Nora,” Castiel says.  

Dean turns the envelope around in his hands.  Nora had written his name on the front of the envelope.  The name on his nametag, anyway. “Aren’t you gonna open it?”

Castiel reaches for it and tears it open.  There is a card inside, one that says Happy Christmas Steve, and a gift card for a restaurant.  

“So, Nora,” Dean says.  He’s looking at Castiel strangely.“How’s that working out?”

“She says I am her favorite babysitter.”

“So no more dates.”

“No more dates,” Castiel agrees.

“Have you ever been on a date?” Dean asks.  “I mean, not Nora, but anyone—?”

He thinks about it.  He doesn’t think any of his more relevant experiences in this area can really be counted as dates.  “I don’t think so,” he says.  

“You should go on one,” Dean says.  “Sometime.  With someone who really likes you.”

“That sounds nice.”

Dean is almost smiling.  “We should do this again sometime,” Castiel says, and Dean raises his head and looks at him in a way that is new and strange.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

“Maybe next year.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything,” Castiel says. “For Christmas.”

“Cas, all I wanted was to spend Christmas at home.”

“I’m sorry, for that, too.”

“Cas,” Dean says, “I’m here with you.  I wanted—””  He stops.  Castiel can hear him catch on a breath of air.  “I can’t take you home with me,” Dean says.  “I’m sorry, Cas.”

He just says, “I know.”

—

He watches Dean walk across the parking lot, casting strange shadows under the streetlights, under the falling snow.  He hears the car door slam.  He watches as the Impala pulls out of the Gas ‘N Sip parking lot and takes the ramp for the interstate.

He unlocks the supply closet and climbs into his sleeping bag.  He thinks he is fortunate that he had chosen a sleeping bag that holds up even in subzero weather.  That’s one thing he has to be thankful for.  Shelter and blankets. And Dean.  Dean had come all this way, just to see him.  

He falls asleep and doesn’t dream.

He gets up at five forty-five when the alarm on his wristwatch beeps.  He folds up the sleeping bag and brushes his teeth in the sink of the employee bathroom.  He washes his face with a bar of soap he’d bought off the shelves of the gas station after a few days of only using the hand soap in the dispenser, after his skin had started to itch and go dry.  He changes his shirt.

He goes out into the station.  When he looks out at the parking lot, he sees a figure sitting on the curb.  Waiting patiently.  

Dean stands up when Castiel unlocks the door.  His shoulders are trembling.  It’s barely ten degrees outside.  He shoves his hands in his pockets.  “Cas,” Dean is saying, hoarse like he’s been shouting for a long time.  Castiel has seen him, when he thinks he’s alone in the Impala.  Castiel has watched him pound his fist on the dashboard and scream in the silence of his car until his voice is gone.  “Cas, I can’t leave here without you.  Please.  I’m here to take you home.”

He can’t move. He hears himself say, “Dean?-”

Dean puts his hands on Castiel’s face and kisses him.


End file.
